


Drumming Song

by JackieSnax



Category: Starling - gogglesque & theyoungdoyley
Genre: Neurodiversity, Other, Polyamory, seemingly one-sided puppy love pining
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-10-17
Updated: 2018-04-15
Packaged: 2018-04-26 20:20:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,526
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5019061
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JackieSnax/pseuds/JackieSnax
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Alex learned to play the drums when they were very young, and the sound could shoot through the stuffy auditorium like a persistent heartbeat, screaming, thick wet Alive, the veins all singing - they started playing then because their teachers thought it might help them focus their energy.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. dum dum dum

**Author's Note:**

> Exercise in character development. Thank Makenzie (aka audible-smiles on tumblr) for this being readable at all holy shit.
> 
> I have no doubt that next time Alex is so much as mentioned this whole thing will be jossed, but man, it was fun to write. Here ya go: short drabble(s?) about neurodivergent drummer Alex.

Alex learned to play the drums when they were very young, and the sound could shoot through the stuffy auditorium like a persistent heartbeat, screaming, thick wet Alive, the veins all singing - they started playing then because their teachers thought it might help them focus their energy. It did - things make sense now, there is a _name_ for the sensation, the spirit, the drive, The Drums, even if learning the art didn’t soften them like teacher probably wanted - in fact, made them more annoying as a student. It did, at the very least, organize something. Alex remembers very little of Before Drums except that there was a rage like spilled acid, terrible sourness everywhere, burning, uncollectable. Drums changed that - produced a barrel to collect it, and a mallet to hammer it out, shape it, give it viable life. Alex’s bones were formed around that sound - made large around reverberations, boom boom, _dum_ , and their marrow still reverberates, that’s how blood works, now, it was all shaped this way. 

It’s not really that they get angry frequently - it’s that they’re always angry, always up there in that space, feeling those drums, rising on the beat to that potential. Teacher raps a ruler over their head and their consciousness rolls like a great fucking boulder over the planet, like a fallen moon, crushing everything, and the Drums They Rise, and it’s difficult, honestly, to keep that kind of beat in check. 

But there’s the ruler, always harder, always coming again, striking truer and truer, beating them into something with less thought, more fear, nothing organized about its beat, and their kin when they come to them, fearful tearful, after a meeting with teachers - Alex just wants that to stop. The fear will kill what’s left of them, boil it away until the pot is smoking, ‘Spastic, noisy, crazy little child - dangerous, expelled, _reform school.’_

So Alex - very young - finds the place the noise gets outside, stuffs it all up, and _contains_. Hides the thrumming drum of their veins. The teachers stop hitting, Alex realizes, when the target is still. So Alex shuts up, goes still, and _hates_. Alex learns to go with silence, to go _quiet,_ because letting the hammering out means it’ll always be Too Loud.

Humans don’t get the beat anyway - don’t understand, don’t _deserve_ the drumming. It’s fine so long as they’re following notes - playing the ugly, stilted, incomplete heartbeats of human music - but they _hate_ Alex’s music, _hate_ Empyrean’s music, try to kill the beat whenever they hear it, so Alex keeps their own safe inside, locked up. Stone Up for humans, muffle it all, glare.

And then they go home and explode for a while.

It annoyed all their kin until they came in Red, and now they could probably set a train on fire and everyone would just tut and be Incredibly Understanding About It. 

That’s what Reds do - Reds have drums, of course. Reds are powerful. Reds are these sleek beautiful vessels of violence here to drum the world into submission, beating back the dark, saving the galaxy, tearing apart humanity with their razor sharp claws and stretching them into new drums. It’s weird to be both incredibly respected and seen as sort of a monster. Honestly the first freaks them out more. 

There’s a test at school that Alex passes spectacularly - math, easy, each equation is just a new beat secretly ticked off with claws tapping on their leg where the noise is muffled, and even though the rest of the tests aren’t too great the math one is good enough that they end up leaving - stuff packed away, shipped off to some new school with nicer windows and floors and doors that slide open with a _fshm_ and 

Stellaraptors. Stellaraptors as teachers. 

They’ve never had teachers that looked like them before.

It’s not all the teachers, true, but it’s many. It’s math class and _music class_ and history and half of English, even, taught by a small Gold who talks to the human co-teacher like they’re friends, they touch each other frequently, joke, and that’s _sort of disgusting,_ that’s _weird,_ a little treacherous, but none of the students get hit here, so there’s that. 

Everything is difficult and huge, big drums encouraged, bring it on. An atmosphere they dreamed up years ago, and then gave up on, so it’s difficult - prodding at thick scar tissue. There is an instinct to duck and freeze that will not die no matter how many time Alex stabs it, hits it, _beats it,_ but after a year of working with older students who understand what kinds of things make someone shut off their sound, the noise is free again - at least around other stellaraptors. Humans crush it in again, which is _humiliating,_ but at least sometimes it’s free. Quieter, more cautious, not as perfect and clear as it used to be for sure, but free. Alex bangs out song after song, harder and harder, and it’s good. They get assigned to a smaller group within the big one for a project on propulsion and that’s when they meet _Elliott._

Elliott Elliott Elliott Elliott Blue. 

Elliott is not the leader of their group, but he acts like it, talking with his hands, talking big, bouncing off the walls, and he has drums too, Alex thinks, quiet ones that go rika tik tik tik tik constantly on the rim of something metal, or maybe something hollow and glass, his claws a gentle, persistent PING! He’s fierce, and _small_ for an adolescent Blue, and Alex sort of hopes in some ugly, selfish part of themself that Elliott will stop being Blue, start being Gold instead, because Gold would be _acceptable._ First time really looking at him Elliott is the small fierce heartbeat that grabs them into orbit on their way to the music room and drags them back to the labs to work on their assignment, chattering all the way, and when he’d noticed Alex tapping on the walls whenever they got close he’d started walking closer to the walls, let it happen, kept talking, and his footsteps had been consistent, in-beat, _perfect._

And there they’d met Kenna - sharp sweet crushing vocals. She bites into sound and sucks it down, whistles everything out in a fruit bright burst, juicy, delicious, and to Elliott’s intensely adorable chagrin: any length of boredom frequently leads to Alex tapping, tapping lightly, and then hard, and then Kenna’s sharp whistle, and then it all unfolds from there, blossoms, blooms, erupts into something gorgeous and intense and NOISE!!!

Elliott likes it, anyway. Alex is 999999% sure Elliott thinks they’re cute. (DUM <3 DUM <3 DUM)

THAT doesn’t matter, though, when you get right down to it. Alex has never had friends before, not really, and they think they would tear out their heart, eat it, and then live a life of celibacy before ever, ever risking this perilous precious thing they’ve found. Kenna singing sweetly after class, the recorder between them, her voice like a live wire through the beat, Alex drumming loud and strong, Elliott with his homework out but watching _Them,_ laughing when Alex dives at him with the mallet, begging him to play - please!! It’s not for him, he says, but he likes to listen. Eventually he lets Kenna strap a tiny microphone to his chest though, and then his amplified heart - clear, solid, quick little drum, exactly like Alex imagined - is strong and steady in the air around them.

Steady. Steady until Kenna comes back to untape it, her voice softer than usual, her words, “Now you’re in the song, too,” and then that heartbeat Leaps!!

She looks at him with soft eyes, squinting. He looks at her like he might be constipated.

It’s nice to watch. Being in love with one, or maybe even both of them, honestly just makes it better. Hopeless, nervous feelings they don’t plan on acting on don’t wreck _this._

Alex doesn’t think anything ever could.

Until Astris, anyway.

Astris takes a fucking bulldozer to all their drums.


	2. BRRRUUUMMMM

Elliott disappears into space for three weeks with no return contact and Alex almost crawls up there to get him, hysteria boiling over their bones, no one knowing anything, saying anything, and even Kenna, calm, considering Kenna is nervous, and Alex is going to get themself named a terrorist commandeering a ship to take them to Astris where they’ll find - what?? What??? Elliott’s bones mounted on the hull? Elliott locked down in a small room for study? Elliott dissected? Elliott nowhere, and everyone pretends they’ve never heard of him, but a single blue feather too young to have come out naturally in the corner and a blank wall for Alex to slam against with the secret of what happened behind it forever and families paid off and everyone just accepting it and Alex stuck boiling down to empty forever and Elliott Elliott Elliott Elliott Elliott gone-

And then there’s a letter that’s like “It was nothing!! I was totally just distracted! You are so dramatic ahahaha it’s all good I love it here it’s great and everyone’s so nice and lovely how’s the album coming along guys"

It’s total bullshit but it makes Alex cry because it’s Elliott-brand bullshit. It’s Elliott, on the other end of this, making up some lie to make them feel better, and they reread it twelve times while tapping out syllables as Kenna grooms and talks about how totally true the letter probably is. Alex is going to break into space to find him. 

More letters of the same sort later. Alex keeps looking for spelling mistakes or something because they saw that in a movie once, a kid in danger communicating ‘they’re hurting me’ through spelling mistakes, and Elliott NEVER makes spelling mistakes so it would be super noticeable, but there are none. Just the lies, and Kenna, when she finally admits that these letters are full of lies, says they really are probably just because he’s Elliott - because he doesn’t want them to worry, because he doesn’t want to admit it’s not going well, because he would rather they believe he’s literally magic and that humans somewhere are listening to him and what he says than have them know he’s, as he’d totally put it, ‘failing.’ 

Alex is convinced Kenna is getting more detailed letters. Elliott always babies them - ALWAYS babies them, they’d be offended if they weren’t so goddamn smitten, but Kenna is totally getting the real stuff.

“I’m not!” she says, in a too-defensive voice, and Alex plays the same three beats consistently while following her around for the next four hours until she lets them see her comp.

There are, indeed, more letters she didn’t share. But they’re just about missing her, and asking how tall she is, and some inside joke about something Elliott and Kenna apparently did without them, and Alex didn’t think this would like, ever really bother them, like, honestly, they prefer that they’re together, wanting both of them means that’s actually kind of hot, but WITHOUT THEM, they did things WITHOUT THEM, and now Elliott’s far away, too, and thinking about it, and sending Kenna more letters than Alex, and shit, shit, shit, 

Kenna grooms them gently as they reread this letter two and a half times and don’t make any beats out of it. 

The letters die off, slowly. Kenna swears she’s not getting more than Alex, and even lets them check, and she’s not. Elliott always responds if Alex sends him a letter asking if he’s ok. “Fine! It’s going well. Just very busy.” 

And then. Then there’s The Letter.

“Things are actually going very well. You’ll never believe this - Calabi Red watched Star Trek with me last night.”

Kenna reads it first. Alex had assumed the ‘ping!’ from their own comp was just more lies, so they didn’t stop what they were doing - recording the same rudiment forty seven different times and overlaying it until it was just Noise when Kenna said, ‘oh’ and opened up the email and then literally shrieked.

Alex had dove for it, tackled her to the ground and read it while she grabbed at her comp, yelling, “Whoa whoa IT’S NO BIG DEAL CALM DOWN!!”

They’d emailed him back immediately. “r u fucking crazy”

A few hours later “Alex, why are you on Kenna’s comp?”

Alex opened their own email. Sure enough, no mention of Calabi Red staying in the room near Elliott long enough to watch an episode of Star Trek.

FUMING, they email back, “he is going to kill u he is going to kill u r u FUCKING CRAZY”

“I really don’t think he’s going to kill me. His favorite character is Nurse Chapel.”

“i don’t care!!! u were gonna stay away from him u were gonna stay AWAY u promised, u lied, u liar, u told me u would stay safe”

and then nothing, nothing for a long time, and Kenna took her comp back and left, and Alex banged their head against a cymbal for a while, and then shot back and forth between two walls for a half hour, and then lay on the roof and stared at the moon and hated it and also any kind of grand creator that might exist, because they were both in the way. 

And then there was this shit in the morning:

“I’m going to take a break from trying to make your life easier for a moment and say what we both know - that I am not doing well, that I am failing, and that nothing has really gone as planned so far. This is the first time I have ever felt successful at Astris at all, and if it makes you uncomfortable, well, you’re not here, you’re not the one doing this, and you don’t understand. Deal with it, please.”

Alex sighed and hugged their comp against them for a long time, until they thought they could feel their own heartbeat through it. And then they sent an emoji of stew boiling in a pot, and Elliott sent an emoji of a happy bird flying around, and Alex sent an emoji of a ninja, and everything was alright again, sort of, except that it WASN’T. They sent Elliott fourteen tiny drumsets to illustrate this. Elliott sent back a <3 

The letters continued to come. Alex started secretly reading Kenna’s whenever she went to the bathroom because Kenna’s actually had information on Calabi Red, and then one night she sent them both an email insisting Elliott just CC everything because if this kept going on she was literally going to kill Alex. Elliott agreed, and then they were getting much more information, a little more formulated to be read by them.

“He’s scared of me - doesn’t like when I touch him, flinches a bit, never really looks at me head-on, but I guess that’s how I act around him too, so.”

Alex sent back, “so u also exploded his planet is this why its fair”

They sort of expected Elliott to laugh. But instead, no they got this, this bullshit, THIS:

“ROY Calabi Red didn’t do that.”

And then, very quickly after, like he’d realized the kind of reaction that would cause, “I mean, technically, he’s still responsible for a lot, has a lot in debt to us emotionally, and frankly he’s done a lot of stupid things just today alone anyway, so it’s not fair, you’re right, he should definitely be more able to look at me, but he’s essentially a glorified statue, a statue with a child’s mind in there, he’s just a kid, really, he’s a child born into all this, that’s all I’m saying.”

Kenna’s crest rose slowly throughout her reading experience of this email and at the end she flopped back on her back and laughed. Alex thought about what it would be like to eat the entire comp.

Roy Calabi Red and Elliott apparently watched two series of Star Trek, whole seasons of other shows, read a book together while trading off chapters to read aloud, and talked about everything from apologies to birthday parties. 

And then.

“He thinks blah blah bloo? This thing blah blah. **He almost yanked half my shoulder feathers out when I told him that** , so surprised, ahahaha, dumb baby” 

“Y IS HE TOUCHING UR SHOULDER FEATHERS”

Dead silence for a week.

Kenna stared at Alex meaningfully, “You know perfectly well why. Don’t make him say it.”

“How can he deal with something like that?” Alex snapped. They were slapping the walls of the school hard as they walked past them, and Kenna was refusing to walk next to them while it was happening, so she was over on the other side of the hallway and they were hiss-whisper-shouting across at each other. 

“I dunno! Maybe by having Roy be his only friend there. I’d crack. Hell, I’d let the first one groom me if no one was doing it for weeks and weeks, let alone months.” 

Alex didn’t speak to her for six hours. They meant it to be longer, but they sort of sucked at things like that, so instead they cracked and biked over to Kenna’s house while she was getting ready for bed and cuddled up with her and groomed her and loved her a lot because it was terrible and they couldn’t believe they hadn’t spoken to her for six hours, what kind of a monster does something like that.

Elliott never responded back with an affirmation that yes, he was letting Roy Calabi Red run his fingers all over Elliott’s cute self, but he stopped actively hiding the information in letters. “While Roy was grooming me,” he even said, a few weeks later, before some story he must’ve thought was more interesting, but really wasn’t. It was just some bullshit about how Roy had brought him three different foods with cinnamon, who cares.

Kenna apparently did, however, as she reread the letter a strange amount of times for her, one could even say an Alex amount of times, while Alex tried to finish both their math homeworks (they always traded English and Math homework when Elliott wasn’t around to disapprove of them doing that).

“Hmm,” she said after a long pause. And then she put the comp down and stared at the ceiling, considering.

“What?” Alex said immediately.

She glanced at them, and her eyes widened and her crest flattened and she said with a steely determination, “Oh, nothing. Nothing at all.”

Alex reread the stupid letter about the stupid Roy Calabi Red and his stupid cinnamon obsession eighty seven times that night and still didn’t get it. They called Kenna up at one point and she shouted that it was too early and hung up on them immediately, and then must’ve turned her comp off because when they tried to call back it went directly to voicemail. So Alex, who couldn’t sleep, couldn’t sleep at all, snuck out of their dorm and went to her house and hung out in her yard with some _tusuou_ fritters for two hours until she woke up and came down in her pajamas and took one and said, “You’re a little creepy sometimes, you know,” before leaning into them and sighing and eating it slowly while purring.

Alex didn’t know what to make of this.

But she seemed bothered, distinctly concerned by what was happening with Elliott, and the next few letters had her stopping what she was doing immediately, dropping down, reading them. One time even though it was while she was singing and music shouldn’t be just stopped like that but Alex was worried about her so they let it slide and slid down next to her and groomed her while she read it, shoulders tight. 

Alex read it over her shoulder - nothing, really. Blah blah Roy blah blah blah. Elliott had stopped referring to the clone as ‘Roy Calabi Red’ and it infuriated Alex, but whatever, really. It wasn’t usually Kenna’s thing to be upset by stuff like that. And nothing in this was really upsetting. Terrible as Elliott’s preferred company was, the letter was just about finding time in an anti-grav gym when no one else was there and how difficult that was, and Roy being scared to go up high in those gyms, and this weird thing he did sometimes where he curled into a little ball and bounced around and Elliott had tried kicking him (that part was funny) like a soccer ball while he was doing that and he’d shot across the gym and laughed hard and chased Elliott around the gym (that part was not). 

Kenna let out a huff and then turned to Alex, “Read this.”

“I already read it over your shoulder, secretly.” Alex said flatly. She honestly should’ve known that.

Kenna snorted and turned back to the letter, examining it. After a pause she said cautiously, “And what do you… make of it, I mean?”

“I think it’s shit.” Alex said immediately.

“I know that, believe me, I know you think it’s shit, but like… examine the shit, please? For me? Just really think about it, read it again, think about it, and then tell me… does anything seem off?” 

Alex made a mad grab for her comp. She whistled shrilly, leaping away and holding it up before adding quickly, “I don’t mean ‘does it seem like he’s in mortal danger’ I mean… well, just read it, ok, and tell me your reaction,” before holding it out to them.

Alex snatched the comp and read it, pacing just a wee bit frantically while they did. Checked for spelling mistakes first - none. Reread each individual sentence, and then backwards, and then from side to side, and no, nope, “Nothing,” they said, handing it back, “I don’t get it, what are you talking about?”

She seemed to be very carefully considering her next words, or maybe whether she would say them at all. When she spoke, her words were very cautious little creatures, and she said, “Try reading it like… Like maybe if Roy was one of us, ok?”

Alex’s mind stopped. “No,” they said.

“Yes though, right!” Kenna reared on them, her eyes wide, “Doesn’t it seem that way?”

Alex shook their head, confused, “No?”

Kenna’s face fell, and then closed off, “Oh, you just mean you won’t think of him that way.”

“Of course not.”

“I’m not telling you to do it out of some graciousness towards him, you know.”

“I know.” They didn’t.

Kenna huffed, glaring, “Just read it again. Pretend he’s not talking about Calabi Red. Pretend he’s talking about - Sarah! Sarah Gold. Here,” and she actually took the comp, copy-pasted all the words of Elliott’s email and some previous ones where he talked about Roy, and replaced Roy’s name with ‘Sarah Gold’ each time.

Alex took the comp. Read it.

Dropped it to the ground with a crash. 

Kenna, too excited to protest, shrieked, “See!! See!!!!”

Alex sat down on the floor.

Kenna flopped down too, her face a little nervous, but horrifically, the nervousness didn’t even seem to be directed at Elliott, who had clearly lost his mind, but at Alex. When she talked about Elliott, she even seemed a little excited, “I knew I wasn’t imagining things. He talks about him like - like, the way he talks about me! Or you. He likes him, he likes him a lot, oh my GOD, this is riiiiiiich.” 

“No,” Alex said. 

“Yes! Think about it! Think about the number of exclamation points he’s used! And god, if I hear one more banal story about this boy I’m going to bald myself, but Elliott, Elliott’s amused by all of it, he doesn’t even see it, he thinks everyone’s gonna be as enthralled by Roy as him, that’s why we keep hearing about this cinnamon shit.”

“Nooooooooo,” Alex said, dropping their head to their knees. 

Kenna laughed, “Imagine if we all grow up and share a house with him.”

Alex literally left the room. This time they didn’t talk to Kenna for eight hours, didn’t even seek her out, because they were busy lying under their favorite drum set in a practice room in a disused corner of the school, tapping very lightly, the way Elliott’s beat went, soft, constant little tikatikatika. 

Kenna found them then. Lay on her own back and scooted under with them. She reached up and danced her fingers on the bottom of a base drum, and it was like brrrrrruuuuuuuummmmmmmm, and she must not have actually KNOWN what that was like, that exact kind of sound next to the tikatikatika at this exact moment with this exact shit running through Alex's mind, but they got mad at her all over again all the same.

“I’m just kidding, you know,” she said softly, “We’re obviously not going to all live in a house together with Roy Calabi Red.”

Alex said nothing. Tikatikatika. 

“It’s just a crush. You know how Elliott is. Kid falls in love every other minute. Roy’s the only one there he’s friends with; of course he’s going to crush on him. I doubt he’s even realized he’s doing it.”

Tikatikatikatikatika.

“He’s gonna come back here, we’re gonna make fun of him for it until the mere mention of the boy makes him shut his eyes and groan, and then it’ll all be in the past. We’ll have school with him again, and after-school real school at his house, and we’ll all grow old and happy together and live in a nice big house and Roy Calabi Red’s gonna be looking woefully on from planets away. I’ll even take a picture of you grooming Elliott and smirking into the camera and send it to him.”

“You think HE’S crushing on Elliott too?” Alex snapped.

“Of course he is,” Kenna said immediately, “Anyone would be. Elliott is adorable.”

Alex couldn’t really argue with that one.

Kenna sighed and rolled over and wrapped her arms around them. And then she reached up and buried her fingers in the feathers in their jaw, and they let out a breath that sounded embarrassingly like a gasp, and reached over and touched her back, their faces tilted together, everything right, lovely, perfect, please.

Kenna spoke softly, her breath ghosting over their face, “We’re the ones who get a happy ending with him, alright?”

‘Not me,’ Alex didn’t want to say, so they didn’t. Because it was true. Kenna and Elliott, yes, they had that coming. They’d have a big, tall household full of Starlings and it would all be great over there. And so long as Roy Calabi Red was NOT part of that household, it was almost bearable. Alex would visit them frequently, know their children, be that mixed Pencoke Single Elder, whatever, they didn’t care, it was painful but very far away from this moment right here where Kenna was hiding under the drums with them and they were holding each other. 

Kenna seemed to sense it anyway though, and her face hardened, and she whispered, “Roy Calabi Red is going to be invited to our house for dinner and he’ll leave _crushed_ by how happy we are.”

“He is not invited over for dinner,” Alex said shortly, and Kenna laughed.

That night Alex sat in front of their comp for a long time, and then sent Elliott a message that was like, “I want to be the one grooming you, and I would do it better, and touch you places he’s not” and hit send before they could think about it even slightly. And then they played a very frantic drumming song until they fell asleep and almost threw up in the morning when they saw they had mail. 

Elliott had literally sent back a smiley face emoji. A human smiley face emoji, but only smiling on one side, and these little eyebrows furrowed and eyes pointing off to the side, and Alex didn’t know what the fuck to make of that, so they showed it to Kenna, who howled with laughter and told them they were “Smooth” and to just "go with your first reaction, because _apparently_ it’s working.”

So they sent back, “what the fuck does that mean. I would! he doesn’t know how to do it he’s bald as fuck humans are SO BALD he has no idea”

And Elliott replied, “I’ve been flirting with you for literally years. Can you maybe flirt back without mentioning Roy? Sort of a mood killer.”

_I’ve been flirting with you for literally years. I’ve been flirting with you for literally years. I’ve been flirting with you for literally years._

I’ve, DUM, been, DUM, flirt, DUM, ing, DUM, with, DUM, you, DUM, for lit-er-a-ly YEARS literally years I’ve been flirting with you, for years, I, Elliott Blue, have been flirting with you, DUM DUM DUM DUM DUM DUM, literally years, for years!!

Alex couldn’t stop smiling. Pushed their face against the comp and purred. Spun around eighty times. Reread it a hundred times.

Roy is a mood killer, too. Roy, the mood killer! Roy’s a mood killer because the mood is Alex and Elliott Elliott and Alex and Kenna Alex Kenna Elliott Elliott Alex Kenna DUMDUMDUMDUMDUM!!!

It is the best letter that’s ever been sent Alex makes immediate plans to print it out and frame it and put it on their wall.

Kenna comes with them to the library to help them, cackling all the way. They buy the most expensive frame for that size and frame it and Kenna takes a picture of Alex holding it and sends it to Elliott, who sends them hundreds of little hearts, and Kenna touches their jaw while they’re both looking at it on the wall, and it’s beautiful, so beautiful, everything is Almost Perfect.

Almost.

Perfect.


	3. bummm ba dada bummm ba dada

Roy Calabi Red’s beat was not what Alex expected.

 

This was absolutely  _ infuriating, _ but the beats didn’t lie. Elliott didn’t lie, either, and Elliott had actually sat down and tried to explain to Alex that ‘Roy’s beat was different than Calabi’s.’ He’d used those words - Alex’s words, an open plea on his face for Alex to  _ understand _ , to see what he saw. Because Elliott really,  _ really _ wanted them to see what he saw, for some confusing, horrifying reason.

 

“What’s his beat, then?” Alex had snapped back.

 

Elliott had paused, anxiety flashing in his face. He’d never excelled at music, and Elliott had some shit about ever doing anything he wasn’t perfect at. He had a sweet enough voice, at least in Alex’s (heavily biased) ears, but his rhythm was atrocious, and knowing someone’s beat was pure THUMP.

 

Alex almost felt guilty. Almost. Almost, almost,  _almost._

 

After a thoughtful pause Elliott reached out a cautious hand. He hovered it over the drumset for a moment, and then abruptly reached past and picked up, to Alex’s horror, a _____. Keys that dropped the barest beads of sound into the world with each gentle tap of talons. 

 

It was a hard instrument to play, but the song Elliott tapped out on it was simple, and he did it so quietly it probably wouldn’t even be audible to human ears anyway. A trade off of low notes, and then, a higher dance across the surface, sparks against a velvet black.

 

Elliott’s fingers fumbled, and a solid high twang burst suddenly into the empty air, bright and sharp.

 

Blue.

 

Elliott laughed, awkwardly. Said “Maybe something like that. I’m no good at this, of course,” and lowered the ____. Didn’t put it down, though - cradled it with both hands on his lap. Ran his thumb so very slightly, so very slowly, over the low keys he’d started with.

 

Alex had to look away, so they looked at Elliott’s face. It was tilted towards the window, bright silver light making him ethereal. The moon was large in the sky, and beautiful, more beautiful than the stars beyond, but Alex knew in their heart that these were the heavenly bodies currently blessed with Elliott’s attention. 

 

That Sol was, specifically.

 

You could see it, this time of year. Stellaraptors could, anyway. 

 

It had been three weeks since Elliott had come home from Astris. He’d been looking often, and he always made  _ that face _ when he did, his beautiful beat bombing into a low, empty thump… thump…  _ thump. _

 

Elliott had said Roy’s beat was something else, something lovely, loved, be-lov-ed (BANG BANG BANG), and it certainly wasn’t  _ that, _ but Elliott had been telling the truth about it being  _ different. _ Elliott didn’t lie. 

 

Elliott did get  _ tricked _ and  _ fooled _ and  _ blinded by his heart, _ clearly, but he didn’t lie. Alex supposed they should’ve known the beat wouldn’t be the low, open roll he’d always thought it would be. The beat of the first one.

 

Instead, it was a hollow  _ thump _ , followed after a breath by two quick, nervous taps, repeat, repeat, repeat. Kenna had been right, too. Whenever Elliott graced the clone with his attention, all over his face, Alex could see it - symbols everywhere.

 

BANG BANG BANG. BANG.

 

Elliott opened the door with a tired expression fixed on his face and a baby burrowed into his side. 


End file.
